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How can I convince you that what you are considering is in reality a general pay cut.

What is a payroll tax to employers is a form of compensation to employees. In the case of FICA it is deferred compensation in the form of a retirement annuity. Last year's cut letting employees take the compensation now rather deferring to retirement was one thing but now to even consider cutting the employer's portion without requiring that it be passed on to employees is effectively a cut in their pay and a windfall to the employers.

Of course owners and the self-employed will love the idea but don't progressives generally support labor?

My own thinking falls somewhere in between the two sides he discusses.

Salmon is correct that the current system masks the risks inherent in holding any security or commodity, including cash. However, there is and always will be a demand for a safe place to stash cash pending reinvestment or distribution.

“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.” That, according to Herbert Hoover, was the advice he received from Andrew Mellon, the Treasury secretary, as America plunged into depression. To be fair, there’s some question about whether Mellon actually said that; all we have is Hoover’s version, written many years later."

Maybe Krugman is correct. Maybe Mellon-style liquidation is now the official doctrine of the G.O.P. Maybe rather than making the comparison then using it to sneer and argue against G.O.P. plans, it might be more effective to make the comparison then use it to advantage.

The subtext here is the Wall Street bailouts and foreclosure wave. All Democratic leaders essentially supported it. This is why there’s grumbling, but no alternatives. The Democrats have really just started their internal debate over big money. https://t.co/8XKgqvJYn2

Brookings Institution fellow Elaine Kamarck on Friday compared President Trump's rhetoric on immigration to "the boy who cried wolf. I think that the president at this point with immigration is like the boy who cried wolf," Kamarck, who also directs the Center for Effective Public Management, told Hill.TV's Jamal Simmons on "What America's Thinking."

What Blair had first conceived of as an elaborate joke was beginning to reveal something darker. “No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back,” Blair once wrote, on his own personal Facebook page. “Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”....“Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual.